Games That Make You Smarter

AnnMaria De Mars

Spirit Lake: The Game can help start college preparation in middle school — “The place you are to occupy in the universe is the space where your greatest passion meets the world’s greatest pain.” Rachel Crosby Is there anything more painful than giving up on your goals in life? Too many times, I have seen students drop out of college or change majors […]

College preparation starts in middle school

September 3, 2019 in Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

3/3 = 1 : Converting a fraction when adding and subtracting fractions with a common denominator — Students often struggle with multi-step problems for a lot of reasons. In my experience, the most common one is they stop too soon. For example, in the first lesson below, the student may add up the fractions of the rice gathered by each of the two sisters and stop there. […]

Adding and Subtracting fractions with a Common Denominator: Multi-step problems

August 31, 2019 in 10 Minute Lesson / Educational Games / Educational Resources / Fifth Grade / Fourth Grade / fractions / Mathematics tagged Common denominator / like denominators / multi-step problems / word problems by AnnMaria De Mars

teacher grading progress reports — I love staying up late grading papers – said no teacher, ever! How DARE I mention student progress reports when it’s only the first week of school? Get student progress reports in seconds I’m serious. You can watch the video below and see how you can register as a teacher […]

Student Progress Reports

August 22, 2019 in Educational Games / Teachers by AnnMaria De Mars

Sunset in South Dakota - Indian education conference travel has its perks — We'll be giving six conference presentations over the next seven weeks, in North Dakota, South Dakota & Minnesota.

On the road again – conference season!

August 21, 2019 in 7GenGames / Start-up Diaries tagged road trip by AnnMaria De Mars

Tic-tac-toe game for teaching multiplication — If you teach math, you are well aware of how essential it is that students learn basics such as multiplication and division. Of course math shouldn’t be all about rote memorization but if you believe it is a waste of time for students to memorize 9 x 7 = 63 […]

Teaching multiplication: Lesson Plan

August 19, 2019 in 10 Minute Lesson / 7GenGames / Cultural content / Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games / Educational Resources / Fourth Grade / multiplication / Third Grade tagged Multiplication Games / teaching multiplication by AnnMaria De Mars

Introducing fractions can be done with anything , like that 2/8 of these snakes are brown — STANDARD: Understand a fraction a/b with a > 1 as a sum of fractions 1/b AAGH! It’s August and almost back to school time. Maybe you are that super-teacher who has everything ready. For the rest of you mere humans, who wish you could have a lesson plan together in just 10 minutes, have […]

Introducing Fractions : Lesson Plan

August 6, 2019 in 10 Minute Lesson / Educational Resources / Fifth Grade / Fourth Grade / fractions / Mathematics tagged examples of fraction problems / introducing fractions by AnnMaria De Mars

Train to San Diego — In today’s episode of Startup Travel , Latinas in Tech or Where in the World are the Founders …. I’m writing this from the Pacific Surfliner, the train that runs between Los Angeles and San Diego. Being an American living on the west coast, every single time I go to […]

UnidosUS: Trains, planes and social impact startups

August 2, 2019 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries / Women in Tech tagged Latinx startups / social impact startups / UnidosUS by AnnMaria De Mars

You can use doughnuts to teach adding fractions — Our Teachers Pay Teachers site gave us some surprising insight on teachers Did I just say teachers too many times in the same sentence? When people ask me what makes us different at 7 Generation Games, I often reply, because we understand something … Schools exist outside of the Silicon […]

Four Things Teachers Pay Teachers Taught Us

July 25, 2019 in Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Have you ever read an article where you think the author was reading your mind because it said all of the things you have been thinking? This happened to me lately in, of all places, the Harvard Business Review blog. The title of the article was “We are all Enron […]

The Golden Rule of Business

July 11, 2019 in AnnMaria / blogposts by AnnMaria De Mars

3 men and a buffalo — 10-minute lesson on primary sources Have your students watch the following two videos back to back. Not the galloping buffalo, the video below that. These two videos together are great resources for a lesson on the value of primary sources. Becoming a Buffalo Hunter How did you learn to hunt […]

Are primary sources important in learning history?

July 8, 2019 in 10 Minute Lesson / Cultural content / Educational Resources / History / Teachers by AnnMaria De Mars

Mayan god-king from AzTech Games — Social Studies key terms and concepts videos and slides – free! I know these are concerns for Social Studies teachers because our video on TeacherTube on history terms had been viewed 50,000 times before we inadvertently copied over it a month ago with the exact same video to include our […]

Social Studies Key Terms and Concepts

July 4, 2019 in Educational Resources / Sixth Grade / Teachers tagged social studies / timelines by AnnMaria De Mars

Meg and Joe teach problem-solving strategies with apples — Don’t I Know It’s Summer? Why am I bothering you? Okay, I know, I know. It’s summer and you don’t want to think about lesson planning. Don’t I know that you only get a few weeks off each year and, for God’s sake, you’d like to take a break! Yes, […]

Resources for Teaching Problem-Solving Strategies

July 2, 2019 in Educational Resources / Fifth Grade / Fourth Grade / Math / Mathematics / problem-solving / Sixth Grade / Teachers by AnnMaria De Mars